Mae was wearing Ruby's curtains.
She stood in the middle of the sitting room with the yellow fabric wrapped round her waist, one bare arm extended towards the window. Behind her, the curtain pole lay on the floor.
‘If you say anything about a toga,’ she said, ‘I'm leaving.’
Ruby set down the box she was carrying. ‘You've moved in. You can't leave over a toga.’
‘Watch me.’
Then the fabric slipped. Mae grabbed it, Ruby laughed, and the blue bowl at the top of the box knocked against another bowl with a small, dangerous click.
They both stopped.
Ruby checked the rim. Whole. She put the bowl on the table with care, as if it might punish her later.
‘Your pottery has excellent comic timing,’ Mae said.
‘Better than your clothes.’
‘These are your clothes. They've been hanging in your window for four years.’
Mae had been in the spare room for three weeks. Somehow it had taken until today to tackle the sitting room. Ruby had wanted to move everything on the night Dan admitted kissing someone else, and then she hadn't wanted to move anything at all. The sofa, the lamp, the ugly square cushion he insisted was comfortable: each had become a decision she could avoid by going to bed.
Dan had moved out six weeks ago. She still found herself turning towards the phone at the time he used to finish work.
Mae had suggested doing the room while Ruby was out. Ruby said no. This morning she had said yes, with conditions. No shopping, no throwing out her things, no describing the result as a journey.
‘I've brought the journey to an abrupt stop,’ Mae said now, dropping the curtains in a heap. ‘These need washing.’
‘They need rehanging.’
‘Both things can happen.’
Ruby looked at the bare window. It faced other roofs, a strip of grey sky, and, if she stood close enough to the glass, the sea. Light reached the back of the room for the first time in weeks.
Mae pushed the sofa six inches sideways, grunting. ‘Help.’
‘You're very bossy for a guest.’
‘I'm being paid in shelter.’
The joke was easy. The situation wasn't quite. Mae had lost the agency work that had kept her rent paid. Ruby knew there had been a client complaint, something unfair that had spread online. She hadn't pressed when Mae cried on the telephone. By the time Mae needed somewhere to live, Ruby had an empty bedroom and was crying too.
They got behind opposite ends of the sofa. Ruby pushed too hard. Mae squeaked as the arm caught her hip, then accused Ruby of attempting to replace her with a houseplant.
They had been friends since they were nineteen, when Mae knocked on the wrong door at a party and found Ruby sitting on the landing, picking a splinter out of her hand. Mae had sat down to help and missed the party. Ruby had never quite stopped being surprised by that.
‘There,’ Mae said. ‘Look.’
Ruby looked. From its new position the sofa faced the window, instead of the television Dan had liked to watch while they ate.
‘That's better.’
‘You're allowed to sound more excited.’
Ruby went to the window. A gull passed low over the roof opposite, carrying something long and pink. She decided against investigating.
‘It's much better,’ she said.
Mae smiled, pleased in a way Ruby could always see before she tried to hide it. Then she picked up the square cushion.
‘This?’
‘Leave it.’
Mae put it down at once. Ruby hadn't expected the relief to be so strong.
They used Ruby's phone for music. Mae selected a song they had danced to in a club whose loos had no locks. Ruby knew the next selection would be worse and grabbed the phone. Mae lunged after it. They fought over the volume until the upstairs neighbour banged once on the floor, which they accepted as a vote against both of them.
Later Mae made Ruby stand still beside the window while she folded the hem of Ruby's shirt underneath itself.
‘No,’ Ruby said.
‘You haven't seen it.’
‘I can feel my stomach.’
‘You have a very good stomach.’
‘It hasn't applied for public life.’
Mae released the shirt. Instead she turned Ruby's sleeves up, took a thin silver chain from the tangle on the shelf, and fastened it round her neck. Ruby held her hair clear and felt the tiny cool clasp against her skin.
‘There. All yours. Nothing new.’
Ruby inspected herself in the small mirror. She had clay under one nail and a tired line between her eyebrows, but she looked like someone who might go somewhere.
‘You should do this for people again,’ she said.
Mae moved the chain half an inch to centre it. ‘People currently have strong opinions about me doing this for people.’
‘Not everyone.’
‘Enough of them.’
Ruby wanted to offer a whole bright future. Instead she touched Mae's wrist, briefly, and let her finish.
The ceramics box was still on the floor. Mae drew the top bowl out, turned it over, and read the small stamp beneath it.
‘Ruby Ellis,’ she said. ‘I like seeing that.’
‘That's generally where names go.’
‘I liked it before you became unbearable too.’
There were forty-two finished pieces in the cupboard off the kitchen. Some had been made for the classes Ruby used to hold in the back room of Dan's bakery. Some she had made after leaving, late at the shared studio, when she didn't want to go home. She still rented this flat herself. Her stock was hers. The workshops had been the part of work she hadn't managed to replace.
Bev Lane had sent her an email about the community hall market. Ruby had opened it three times. She would need a stall, a sign and the ability to stand beside her work without apologising for its price.
Mae lifted the bowl to the light. Its glaze was blue at the bottom and almost white round the edge.
‘How much?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Then put twenty-eight on it. Don't do that thing where you announce a discount before anyone's asked.’
Ruby sat on the newly moved sofa and opened the email again.
The market was in just over two weeks. She could probably get more pieces through the kiln. She could certainly spend two weeks worrying about whether anybody would buy them.
‘Will you come?’ she asked.
Mae lowered the bowl. ‘Obviously.’
Ruby filled in the reply before she could turn the request into a joke. One ceramics stall, under her own name. She would bring samples tomorrow.
Her thumb hovered over Send.
‘Don't watch,’ she told Mae.
Mae turned her back with theatrical obedience. Ruby sent it.
‘Done.’
Mae turned round. ‘Good. Now come and tell me whether this lamp looks better here.’
Ruby went to help. Her phone stayed on the sofa, silent, while they argued over the lamp.